A Note on the Pinning of Things

*Disclaimer: Wherein I Bitch About A Wedding To Which I Wasn't Invited

To start - I love Pinterest. It's basically everything I always wanted the internets to be - a place to save ideas without having just a list of https://www.blah and/or confusing notes to myself. I like seeing what other people pin and getting those emails that 3201885 other people have repinned my pins (ok, only 3, but still.) I'm proud of my pins because I like to dig a little bit and not just repin the first and most popular pins I see. Same with wedding blogs - I'm not planning one of my own (yet) but I like to look at pretty pictures and read fun writing. The uniqueness is what I love about blogs like The Knotty Bride and The Charity Wedding. They don't just grab images from Pinterest that are adorable - they seek out the original and thoughtful, so people are inclined to be inspired and not just imitators.

My sweetie and I attended our 7th (or 8th, we've lost count) wedding of 2011 a few weeks ago. It was in an amazing space, Foundation Architectural Reclamation in Kansas City, Kansas. Long story short, the couple's original reception spot was declared condemned or something so this location was found last minute. Picture a huge old warehouse in an old part of the city, revamped speakeasy on the first floor and reclaimed furniture and architectural pieces on the second floor. I didn't know what decade I was in. Unfortunately, the older the building, the thinner the walls, and there was a seocnd wedding going on somewhere else in the building that had a live band rocking out, which kind of disturbed our friend's carefully picked slideshow music, but whatever. Not a big deal. It did not manage to disrupt their first dance to Meatloaf's "I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)", thank goodness. (Is there a better first dance song? Or longer? I don't think so.) Anyway, the music continued through the walls for a while, and when we decided to take our drinks outside to look around we found the entrance to that wedding. We just walked in, as it basically opened up into the street, and crashed our first wedding.

  

It looked Pinterest had barfed all over everything.

via Pinterest via The Farmer Family

The wedding we crashed had it all. Mason jars instead of glasses. A cake with one of those adorable little bunting/banners on it with something cute written on the tiny flags (you KNOW the cake I'm talking about. It's freaking everywhere. Is it an Italian thing or something?).

Via Pinterest via Belle The Magazine

 Actually, a whole table of adorable cakes and pies. Burlap tablerunners and seat decorations. Mismatched vases on every table with sparse-yet-whimsical flowers. Cowboy boots. A photobooth with hideous mustaches (lol! mustache!! I AM SO SICK OF MUSTACHES) and huge neon plastic sunglasses for props. The space itself already looked like an old barn, so add that to the list. If it's been on any DIY Wedding list in the last 6 months, this wedding had it. I half expected to see a sign saying "this wedding brought to you by every wedding blog, ever!"

via Intimate Weddings

Now, DON'T GET ME WRONG. I LOVE Mason jars and will be using them at my wedding because they're harder to break. I think burlap is great in small doses. I think cowboy boots are infinitely better for dancing than heels. Photobooths are the funnest thing ever. I'm not trying to bash this bride or the couple AT ALL. Hell, I'm the one who walked into someone else's wedding. For the record, everyone looked like they were having the best time ever and I totally would have gotten up there and danced to that band. I don't know the couple. Maybe all of those touches were specific to them.

I guess I just don't think it's a reflection of who you are as a couple when you do what everyone else in the world is doing and obviously get all of your ideas from the internet. A wedding isn't an expectation to live up to, it's a reflection of two people and what they care about most. What people are going to remember are the special moments and the tears and how good the cake was and how much their feet hurt from dancing and how much in love the couple is. (Well, that's what I remember. My first thoughts the morning after a wedding are: "holy geesuz I should have taken all that leftover cake home. Where can I get it?" and whether or not zappos will accept those heels if I return them because please god I still can't feel my toes.)

  Am I all alone on this? Do I spend too much time looking at pretty wedding pictures so every wedding from now on is going to be ruined for me? The thing is, I don't think so. Like I said, we've been to approximately 16 weddings in the 3 years David and I have been together and every single wedding was special in its own wonderful way.  I guess a part of me is still so stymied by the multi-thousand dollar extravaganza that is the modern wedding. All I have to build on is my parent's living room ceremony, and I don't think anything could get much better than that.

Meat. Loaf.